For those that are in the know, Spiceworks is working on a feature with Eaton that will scan, track, monitor, alert, and advise you on the UPS's running in your network.

For this reason, our development team has needed to test UPS's in action. This means unplugging things in the server room.

Did I mention we are developers, not IT professionals?

Well, we left one of the UPS's unplugged. This normally isn't an issue as our Eaton UPS survives for hours at a time. But not all day *and* overnight.

I've attached a screenshot of what our Eaton UPS looked like in Spiceworks right after we plugged it back in. Luckily we didn't have too many things running on that rack...

Having power go out in your server room is serious business. We woke up to a serious guy who owns and operates the server room who wasn't very happy the power went out. IT had our head on a chopping block.

Because of our mishap, we now have a rack-room sign-in sheet so we know whose head to chop next time. (Image attached.)

If the power goes out on a switch (like it did for us), all the machines that are wired to it lose connectivity. All of those applications (Exchange anyone?) no longer run - it doesn't matter if that machine is still up. Your infrastructure needs to be up too.

UPS's are a main way to ensure utility power failure doesn't bring your IT infrastructure to a halt. Spiceworks 5.1 (coming soon!) integrates the monitoring of your UPS devices seamlessly and with ease.

SpiceDev has survived another day in the trenches trying to simplify IT!

@Gary342, that Alert 11E looks seriously cool. I like the optional panic button.

On some of snmp based ups's, they have builtin humidity and temperature sensors which you can monitor. They also tell you which part of the device experienced a power failure. So you know if it's the input, battery, or output.

I am pretty sure the bulk of the basic monitoring/mgmt functionality will work with most UPS's... (snmp support especially). Best thing to do is get in on the 5.1 Beta so you can try it all out. Should be within 30 days or so...

You now, even with the vaguely sarcastic sign in sheet Spiceworks must be a great place to work. I don't let developers in my server room unless they are escorted, depending on the developer it may even require the escort to be armed with a smacking stick. It ends up balancing out since they don't let me modify their source code.

I remember the day some electrician cut the breaker to the server room. The UPS died and i was not too happy. He was lucky i was wearing tennis shoes.

During the run up to Y2K one of our physical security guards assigned to do hourly routine checks of the site decided that the emergency fire power shut off switch should have been in the off position not in the on position. Well it was about 20 min of terror in the Y2K command center with calls being made and blood pressures rising. . . The upside was that the failover systems worked perfectly.

@Alex3031, we'll support the major UPS's both usb and snmp based. We have much more information about the snmp based UPS's.

I unfortunately have 1 strike against me, because I caused the last outage. I walked in yesterday to Kris saying "no more server room for you."

I am going to tell secrets so if you don't hear from my for a couple days it is because my fellow admins have hunted me down for my trangressions and destroyed me.

Forgiveness from an admin is based on a special sliding scale, by default forgiveness will occur just before the end of time or when three or more people do something worse and we forget. Bribes of food and alcohol adjust our feelings from "Must remove fingers toughing my servers" to "Will remove fingers if he does something to remind me of what he did and that it is not the first time". Most admins have worked out a secret handshake with the CFO to allow sharks with fricken lasers on their heads to be purchased if a developer commits three or more unforgivable acts in the server room.

Most admins have worked out a secret handshake with the CFO to allow sharks with fricken lasers on their heads to be purchased if a developer commits three or more unforgivable acts in the server room.

You guys have budget for that? Our CFO told us we had to make do with rabid chipmunks, and we were only allow two per year.